Powering pedals

[c.13]

Hello all, I’m relatively new to playing guitar and over the couple of years I’ve been playing, I’ve got quite a lot of pedals that need powering. Currently I’ve been daisy chaining most of them (powered with boss psa adapter), with very little noise but I’ve had to use a cheaper power supply with my Boss RE-20. I’m not exactly sure what I should be looking for in a power brick, but I’m thinking that it needs isolated 9V outputs, and the most current I’ll need it to supply is just less than 150mA. I’m looking at the MXR DC Brick, anyone have any experience with it? Any other ones I should consider looking at?

[Severed Hand]

I’d just get a second hand pedal power 2 plus make sure they give you the cables that go along with it.

[UlricvonCatalyst]

You may only need 9v/150mA right now, but given the price of a new Power Brick, to me, it'd make sense to spend a little bit more on something with more flexibility to ensure it's future-proof. What that is depends on where in the world you live.

After researching options/prices till I was sick to the back teeth I opted for a Cioks Schizophrenic, and shortly afterwards wished I'd researched/costed the Gigrig system, but I at least got a well-designed, flexible PSU out of it.

My advice would be to dig deep into the reviews, because there are apparently a lot of quite costly PSUs out there purporting to have isolated outputs, which have nothing of the kind.

[timtam]

The DC Brick is not fully isolated. The Iso Brick is. Some setups get by without full isolation, others don't.
http://stinkfoot.se/power-supplies

But full individual-output isolation and other features can be had relatively inexpensively. eg the Harley Benton 'Pro' series ...
https://www.thomann.de/gb/search_compar ... t[]=463278

[c.13]

The DC Brick is not fully isolated. The Iso Brick is. Some setups get by without full isolation, others don't.
http://stinkfoot.se/power-supplies

But full individual-output isolation and other features can be had relatively inexpensively. eg the Harley Benton 'Pro' series ...
https://www.thomann.de/gb/search_compar ... t[]=463278

Yeah, I had a look at some reviews on the DC Brick and found it wasn’t isolated, so it’s basically just a glorified daisy-chain. Those Harley Benton ones look promising, and one also has higher voltage + current outputs which is ideal for future proofing.

[Shadoweclipse13]

You may only need 9v/150mA right now, but given the price of a new Power Brick, to me, it'd make sense to spend a little bit more on something with more flexibility to ensure it's future-proof. What that is depends on where in the world you live.

After researching options/prices till I was sick to the back teeth I opted for a Cioks Schizophrenic, and shortly afterwards wished I'd researched/costed the Gigrig system, but I at least got a well-designed, flexible PSU out of it.

My advice would be to dig deep into the reviews, because there are apparently a lot of quite costly PSUs out there purporting to have isolated outputs, which have nothing of the kind.

I've been eyeing Cioks stuff for a while, as they seem like they make really nice stuff. I can say from personal experience that if you want flexibility, the Gig Rig system is amazing. My main board is stupidly ridiculous, I've still got room to grow, and if/when I fill those up, I can add another isolator no problem. It's not inexpensive by any means, but a very cool system.

[Domm]

I have both the voodoo labs pp2 and the walrus audio aetos power supplies they both work great if your not running a bunch of strymon type stuff. the dc brick wasn't my thing, lots of noise!! had a bbe supercharger at one point that was great as well.

[JVG]

I have the Pedal Power Mondo, and it serves my needs perfectly. 12 independent power supplies, 4 of which are 400mA, 2 are 250mA, and the rest 100mA. Even though you don’t have any power-hungry pedals at the moment, you should allow for the possibility in future.

Cheers!
J.

[shoule79]

I use this. It’s isolated and has zero noise issues. I’m running a mix of vintage and boutique pedals, including a couple Strymons. Best price vs performance option I could find.

https://www.amazon.ca/Alimentation-gui ... _1_1_sspa?

[timtam]

I use this. It’s isolated and has zero noise issues. I’m running a mix of vintage and boutique pedals, including a couple Strymons. Best price vs performance option I could find.

https://www.amazon.ca/Alimentation-gui ... _1_1_sspa?

That Ammoon supply appears to be a re-badged Vitoos ISO-4 Plus. Vitoos is also thought to make the Harley Benton supplies I linked above. I have the Vitoos ISO-8 / Harley Benton ISO-2 Pro. They are all inexpensive, solid, fully isolated supplies with very decent current/voltage options.

They're cheap enough that you can treat them as modular. eg buy one now ..then when your needs expand, buy a second one. You just need to accommodate the wall warts - some people don't like those, but they can take the mains transformer further away from your pedals.

[shoule79]

^^^^^

I was looking for the Vitoos and couldn’t find one in Canada for some reason, and found that this one was the same. Completely happy and would buy again for another board.

[JSutter]

Truetone makes great power supplies as well.

[monsterdonkey]

I got the Truetone CS12 after lots of deliberation. One thing to be aware of with many power supplies is that they count total number of jacks, but those aren’t always all useable. The CS12 has one AC jack, which is not particularly useful to me. It also has two non-switchable 18v jacks which brings the total useable 9V jacks down to 9. That said, I use one of the 18V jacks, and several of the 9V are switchable to 12V which is good for ACA Boss pedals, as well as a 4V to 9V sag option. They aren’t isolated in the usual sense, but Truetone explains some of that on their website. I find that my pedals that were noisy on a daisy chain (Space echo pedal, EQD Westwood) are silent on their own jacks. An interesting thing about the Truetone power supplies is that you can go over the stated milliamp limit on a jack and it will shunt extra juice not being used elsewhere, up to the limit of the power supply. Again, witchcraft explained on their site. I didn’t think I’d need all of those jacks but now that I have them I’m glad I got the larger one.

[ElephantDNA]

The truetone stuff is reasonably priced used and works just fine.